The landscape is breathtaking and for those of my generation, it’s a trip down memory lane to the time when VHS cassettes introduced us to the continent through films like Savage Harvest, Hatari and Born Free. The film scores big on its showcasing of Africa.
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His journey takes him on an incredible path from his quiet Bengali village to the heart of Africa in search of a fabled diamond mine. Just as in the book, Dev’s character is a dreamer who wants to travel the world. No such deviations are needed for Shankar though. So the gutsy Diego Alvarez, played by Gerard Rudolf, is shown as hailing from Portuguese Chinsurah, which is why he can speak a smattering of Bengali. The storyline follows Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s classic novella set in 1909 quite closely, with some necessary adjustments. Do they get their money’s worth? More on that later. So Chander Pahar is their symbiotic embrace, each seeking something from the other. The hero has the masses twined around his little finger, but seeks the afterglow of intellectual praise. The director is coming off Meghe Dhaka Tara - critically acclaimed, but commercially unviable. Let’s not forget that this outing is a rebirth of sorts for Kamaleswar and Dev, as both step out of their comfort zones. The director and the actor do their best: marching, plodding, running, galloping - but sadly, never really soaring with the film.
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So there’s much effort and a lot of sweat in Chander Pahar. Our Tollywood voyagers may have arrived two centuries after the African explorer, but they haven’t missed his advice. “Damn right, we say” - Kamaleswar Mukherjee and Dev (reborn 2013).Īnd that is Chander Pahar for you in a nutshell. “I will go anywhere, provided it is forward” - David Livingstone (born 1813). Because the kids will love it, for Dev and the animals. Should you watch it? Of course you should, and here’s why.